Interview with Roland Muldoon

Abstract

Roland Muldoon, born 1941 in Weybridge Surrey, left school at 15 worked as city clerk to building labourer took a technical course Bristol Old Vic school and became stage director at Unity Theatre where he also made his acting debut, joined Management Committee and was expelled 1964. With Claire Burnley (later Muldoon), Red Saunders and Ray Levine he formed one of the first political underground theatre groups: CAST, Cartoon Archetypical Slogan Theatre, as a socialist collective celebrated for its fast moving direct style, “combined like Jazz”. The plays usually featured an anti-hero Muggins a working class ‘clown’. CAST played in halls, pubs and colleges but rarely in theatres. CAST split in 1971 with Claire & Roland Muldoon reforming the group and receiving an annual Arts Council grant in 1976 enabling the group to tour Britain for ten years. The one-man play ‘Confessions of a Socialist’ won a Village Voice OBIE New York. CAST lost its ACGB grant in 1985. The group received support from the GLC for its New Variety project and staged a circuit: eight one night venues in the capital helping to give birth to the live comedy boom. In 1986 the group took over the Hackney Empire and ran it for twenty years. Nowadays, CAST as New-Variety-Lives presents comedy shows and the annual New Acts of the Year Final at the Bloomsbury Theatre (25 January 2015).